1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for a plurality of business entities to bear the cost of a terminal device, which can make use of services provided by these business entities. More particularly, the present invention relates to a terminal management method and a terminal management device in a case that a plurality of service business entities distribute to subscribers, either gratuitously or for a small fee, terminal devices (network terminals), which connect to a network such as the Internet, and the cost of these network terminals is borne by the plurality of service business entities.
2. Description of the Related Art
In line with the widespread use of the Internet in recent years, service business entities, such as Internet service providers (ISP), which provide Internet connection services, and application service providers (ASP), which provide a variety of services (online shopping, online stock trading, and so forth) over the Internet, are conducting operations, which allow users to subscribe to these services by providing to subscribers, either free-of-charge or for a small fee, terminal devices (network terminals, such as, for example, personal computers or set top boxes), which connect to the Internet, in order to increase the number of users subscribing to these services. In this case, the service business entities recoup the cost of the network terminals provided to subscribers either gratuitously or for a small fee, via the service utilization charges paid by subscribers.
In this manner, service business entities, by increasing the number of subscribers by providing users with either free or inexpensive network terminals, are attempting to increase revenues resulting from the service utilization charges from these subscribers, and are making it possible to continue service provision operations by recouping the cost of network terminals.
However, for example, in a case that personal computers are distributed as network terminals, there have been a rash of incidents in which only the word processing software and such, which either has been installed in these personal computers beforehand, or is installed by a subscriber afterwards, is being used, and the services provided by the service businesses are not being used.
Thus, because services are not being used in accordance with the distributed terminals, revenues from service utilization fees from subscribers are decreasing, and there are also limited funds available for investments designed to acquire subscribers, making it impossible to recoup the cost of the network terminals, and thus impossible to continue service provision operations.
Therefore, there are cases in which shouldering the cost of these network terminals is too great a burden financially for a single service business. In a case such as this, the cost burden on a single service business can be reduced by a plurality of service business entities sharing the cost of distributed network terminals. Network terminals distributed jointly by a plurality of service business entities can make use of the plurality of services provided by these service business entities, and a subscriber will subscribe to each of the services provided by the plurality of service business entities, respectively.
However, it is supposed that there will be cases in which services capable of being used via network terminals will change after network terminals have been distributed to subscribers. For example, there will be cases in which, in addition to services (for example, an Internet connection service and an online stock trading service) by service business entities sharing the cost of initial network terminals, a new service (an online shopping service) by another service business entity, will be added. In a case such as this, this other service business entity is not sharing the cost of the network terminals at network terminal distribution.
Thus, when it becomes possible to utilize a new service provided by another service business entity subsequent to network terminal distribution, there are times when the new service thereof is utilized often, and the services provided by the service business entities sharing the cost of the network terminals are not used.
As a result, whereas revenues of service utilization fees from subscribers increase for this other service business entity, revenues resulting from the service utilization fees of the service business entities sharing the cost of network terminals decrease, making it impossible to continue service provision operations.